The Indirect Costs of Caring for a Child with a Disability

Abstract

Caring for a child with a disability can be both challenging and enriching. The ground reality is that most families are facing challenges in balancing paid work and family responsibilities. This raised an ongoing question about society’s inadequate response in providing the necessary support to address extra caregiving demands. Empirical evidence has shown both direct and indirect costs associated with caring for a child with a disability. Both costs are linked with the additional caregiving duties that the parents are facing. There is a lack of detailed insights into the long-term employment and health consequences of raising a child with a disability and the associated mechanisms. There has also been little longitudinal research trying to understand how raising a child with a disability affects parental employment and health over time. Considering these limitations, this doctoral thesis aims to enhance the understanding of the indirect costs of caring for a child with a disability. More specifically, using a large national registry in Norway it asks an overarching question: To what extent does child disability impact parental employment and health over time? The dissertation consists of three articles. They all utilized a national registry from Statistics Norway, specifically the National Education Data base, the Central Population Register and the Event History Database. Article 1 examined the long-term impact of caring for a child with a disability on parental labour market participation, working hours and labour earnings. The sample included all children who were born between 2004 and 2011, and their respective mothers and fathers (n = 2,955,735). The results showed how raising a child with a disability has a negative effect on parents’ employment participation, working hours and labour earnings. The observed negative employment consequences were more pronounced among mothers than fathers, and among parents caring for children with more severe disability. Moreover, the adverse employment consequences were more apparent for those caring for a school aged child. Caring for children with more severe disabilities reduced fathers’ labour income but had little impact on their working hours or labour market participation. Article 2 investigated the relationship between mechanical and psychosocial job exposures and sickness absence among mothers caring for children with and without disabilities. The sample included children born between 2005-2013 (n=147,507), and their respective mothers. The findings show that, even after accounting for job exposures and other possible confounding factors, mothers of children with disabilities experienced higher sick absence days than other mothers. The interaction analyses suggest that mechanical and psychosocial occupational exposures do not have differential impact on differences in the number of sick absence days between mothers in two groups. The third article investigated differences in return to work at 2 years post-birth between mothers of children with and without disabilities, and the associated mechanisms. The sample was limited to children who were born between 2007-2013 (n= 107,298), and their respective mothers. The analyses show that mothers of children with disability were less likely to return to work following childbirth compared to those without. The findings show a stable difference in returning to work between the two group of mothers, even after adjusting for sociodemographic and job-related characteristics. The factors having the strongest impact on mothers’ return to work were psychosocial job exposures and highest completed education. Mechanical job exposures, immigrant background, and family structure had a moderate association with mothers’ return to work. Mothers age at birth, and number of younger siblings had weaker impact on mothers’ return to work. The interaction analyses showed that educational level, divorce status and mechanical job exposures had differential impact on return to work between mothers with and without a child with a disability. Overall, the findings provide suggestive evidence that the observed substantial and stable difference in employment and health outcomes between parents of children with and without disabilities can be related to the extraordinary caregiving responsibilities. More specifically, mothers of children with disabilities experience a more pronounced child penalty even in countries like Norway, where welfare support for this group of mothers is relatively robust and extensive compared with other countries. The results draw attention to the need for more support for mothers of children with disabilities to achieve a better work–life balance.